It’s 10 am. I’m exhausted; too much Lotza and a bad run in with some Russians. But we’re laughing, and that’s what matters. I lie in bed post-breakfast debating what to do with the day. It snowed 3 feet in Centenje, the town just over the low coastal mountains that we visited yesterday. We nearly didn’t make it back to the hotel last night and this morning, the road is closed due to the weather. It snowed 5 feet in Kolasin, the ski area we’ve been hoping to reach since we arrived on Tuesday. A passanger train from Podgorica is stranded between avalanches on the way to the resort. The snow line on the hills meets the sea, and the usually azure Adriatic is silty and tumultuous, crashing onshore in massive barrels.

Our merman, Wells

My brain stumbles through sleep deprevation and I hear a tiny, light knock on my door. It’s Wells, the large, hunkering, Nord, a hint of a giggle in his smile as he asks if I want to join them spa-ing. “I was already there for an hour this morning, but since we’re definitely not leaving today, I’m going back!”

Wells reminds me of Big; he is a 10 year-old in a 30 year-old body. He’s always laughing, playing, making absurd comments. At any rate, this down day is going to be anything but boring. The spa at the Hotel Spledid is absurd. It’s filled with pools of different temperatures, surrounded by Doric Columns, large windows and reclining beach lounge chairs. Cher and Vengaboys beats out of the sound system, as the few visiting Eastern Europeans and Russians lounge around the pools, but seldom in them. We decide to pool hop,, strategically testing the temperature and and jets in each pool, from powerful bubbles rising from the floor, to pounding waterfalls and currents. Dipping, diving, and dripping through corridors as we sample the waters.

“Let’s jump in the ocean!” shouts Wells. The rain bounces off the marble paving stones. The waves are still pummeling the beach. It looks cold and gloomy, steam forming along the window frames from the warmth of the pools. Why not?

We run from door to door, laughing like school children,trying to get out of the winterized resort. We snatch a plastic drink menu from the pool bar, jam it in the door, and run to the beach. Splashing through freezing puddles and tentatively charging over slippery stones. I sprinted down the beach and into the foam, halting on the pebbles as the waves crash in front of me. The riptide is ferocious and the pebbles swirl in the waves. Wells and Adam throw themselves under the waves, emerging from the wake draped in seaweed, swim suits full of rocks. Laughing. The water is luke warm, almost warmer than the air, and for the moment, the rain and the wind have stopped. The mountains are dusted in snow, and I’m on the beach, bikini clad, cartwheeling, and only slightly chilled. It definitely beats swimming in Lake Tahoe in February.